Survivability services may be provided to communication devices that experience a network service outage. Such an outage may occur due to a node failure or damage to a transmission line over which communication messages sent by communication devices travel.
Survivability services often require hardware elements that need to be maintained and serviced. Such services therefore often incur costs in terms of the hardware and maintenance. Further, such services may only provide a limited number of mobility options or not provide for device mobility. For example, typically infrastructure must be employed such as analog, Session Initiation Protocol (“SIP”) gateways or Time-division multiplexing (“TDM”) gateways at a survivability site that must undergo administration and maintenance to remain able to provide the service. Additionally, usually statically provisioned circuits must be provided for permitting communications to travel between the different terminal devices receiving the survivability service and the survivability gateways. Such circuits also need to be maintained and incur a cost in terms of a capital cost for installation as well as operating costs associated with maintaining those circuits.
In addition to costs, such survivability services may be rendered at a reduced level of service. For instance, the transmission quality or transmission capacity of the survivability gateways may be limited as compared to typical network service.
A new survivability service is needed that permits survivability services to be provided more efficiently. Preferably such a service also does not result in degradation or at least a significant degradation in services during a network outage.